What Real Estate Agents Should Know about Twitter

While not for everyone, Twitter is a new communication tool that provides the real estate agent several opportunities to connect with online communities.

Maybe.

A tool embraced by the early adopter, the real estate agent using Twitter can benefit from thought leadership, connection to the influencers, additional message reach, access to mobile communicators, real-time communication. But more importantly, the opportunity to build relationships through conversations.

But here’s the deal: this tool is probably only good for those who may already have a blogging strategy or are high-communication individuals. Before you decide to use Twitter, make sure it fits in your marketing plan.

And consider this: although there is no formal data, it’s likely audience and user base consist of early-adopter social media folks and influencers, with an average age of 30-45. 

What is Twitter?

Twitter is really much like blogging, but on a miniature scale. The character limit is 140, which requires that users simplify their message.

Twitter has social network features, so users can add or remove friends, for example.

Think of Twitter as a new instant-messaging tool: users can blast messages to their community of clients or prospects, send private messages, or search.

Twitter, till now, has been for the highly engaged, early-adopter, pro-technology user. It’s highly likely that these users participate in other forms of online publishing and communication, like blogging, Facebook, and mobile activity.

What to Publish?

Having in mind the 140-character limit, users are publishing the following types of content:

What are you doing?: Users will tweet information related to them, from “Liddy baptized at 9am” to “taking Mali out for a walk,” or even questions like “what should I do in Vancouver?”

Responding to others: Members within a connected network (this means you are following them and you are following them, and this is easy as pie to do: search, find and click “follow”) can respond to each other using the reply symbol “@”—such as “@Vancouver is a great city. You need to visit….”

Links: Drop a link to an interesting article about your market or your most recent blog post.

And dig this: when your URLs are 130 characters are shorter, Twitter will automatically convert them to a TinyURL. However, TinyURL pushes people through a Preview Page first so you can “safely” see the full URL before proceeding to the target page.

In my opinion, this is annoying. This is annoying because all your friends aren’t probably going to push you to a pornographic or unsuitable page. Use Urltea instead when putting URLs in Tweeter from a PC.

Here’s What You Need to Know

Savvy Twitter users realize that effective communications isn’t about just pushing content to readers. They also start conversations with other people.

This is not just a broadcast tool, it’s also a conversation tool. That means you can reply to followers using the “@” symbol, and engage in dialogue.

In essence, use this tool as a global chat room: respond to others, build relationships, and listen in. Like blogging, the rule of anti-marketing marketing is required for success: engage your community.

Also, Twitter is “opt-in,” meaning that users choose to “follow” a twitter account. Abuse that good will and followers will unsubscribe.

Getting Started

Check out Rafe Needleman’s (CNET) “Newbie Guide to Twitter” or watch this video. For the rules of engagement read Brian Oberkirch’s “Advanced Twitter: Don’t Tweet Like A n00b.”

So, what’s the best way to learn? Experiment. Try creating a personal account before deploying a brand account. Also, creating a Twitter account might be a good idea if you don’t have a blog. It’s a super easy, simple first step.

But first, evaluate whether it’s right for your audience. My best guess is that 20-40 somethings in urban areas are your most likely candidates. If that doesn’t describe your market, you might be a lonely Twitter user.

Another thing: at the moment, Twitter is not an SEO strategy. That means there is no value to your website or search rankings when using Twitter.